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Are you the box needing a poke?

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Poke the BoxPoke the Box by Seth Godin

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Are you the box needing a poke?

Wow. Seth Godin’s newest book Poke the Box has been out for a mere 3 days, and I notice there are already 14 reviews on Goodreads and 46 more at Amazon.com. Blogger buzz was singing high notes in my feed reader.

As an author it’s easy to feel the green monster of envy breathing down your neck, for Godin has quite a tribe of sneezers (as he calls his vocal audience of idea spreaders). However I’m someone who’s feeling mighty grateful for the energy he’s stirring up.

Seth Godin enjoyed picking on managers in Tribes, We Need You To Lead Us, and he doesn’t let up in this book either:

“So the new manager says to herself, ‘I better not tell my staff that pickles are the trendy new appetizer, or they’ll be on the menu within days— and if they flop, the buck will stop with me.’” ~ Poke the Box

However this time my reaction was different. I see his rant (which he admits PTB is, both rant and manifesto) as a welcome challenge to managers everywhere, one which asks, Have you been part of the problem?

For if you have been (or heaven forbid, still are), here’s a guy giving you a golden opportunity: Evangelize new projects. Support their leaders. Turn into a new breed of manager, and prove that a lot of what Godin has said about you in both Tribes and Poke the Box is wrong — at least on your turf, in your workplace, and in your life.

“The company policy manual has an answer for your situation, and it only takes a few vice presidents to make it clear.” ~ Poke the Box

Poke the Box is written for your employees, and/or you as an employee, and Godin has written it for just one reason: To convince them (and you) that they MUST have more initiative and be a self-starter in everything they do. Not should, must. And work is a great place to make your magical turnaround happen:

“If there’s no clear right answer, perhaps the thing you ought to do is something new. Something new is often the right path when the world is complicated [as it often is.]”
~ Poke the Box

Godin’s coaching, and the sneezing of his über excited audience, is FANTASTIC news for managers — unless they’re the old schoolers he describes who much prefer employees who are “cogs” and excel at compliance, not creativity. However you” Are you ready to break some rules?

Poke the Box is a quick read: Just 96 pages long. At $4.99 on Kindle and other e-readers, it’ll be a much better wake-up for managers than their morning coffee if they take Godin’s advice to heart and “Go, go, go.”

I really enjoyed the book, for Seth’s trademark pithiness shines through in several spots (there aren’t chapters, just short sections). He has a talent for making contrarian thinking seem so obvious and reasonable:

“Only in systems where quality is a given do we care about attempts [which might not work]. I’m not sure Yoda was right when he said, ‘Do or do not, there is no try.’ Yes, there is a try. Try is the opposite of hiding.” ~ Poke the Box

If your employees read this book, you’d best not be hiding either. They’re likely to need your help, for as I tell you in my own writing, over and over again, managers matter. I don’t care what Seth or anyone else says about you: To be an Alaka‘i Manager is to answer a nobler calling.

Yes, I like Seth Godin and admit to being a fan.

However if you’re a manager, I want you to prove him wrong. Wrong about your role, your spirit, and your demeanor.

For he’s right about you in so many other ways:

“You already have good ideas, already have something to say, already have a vivid internal dialogue about what you could do and how it might make things better. If you don’t, if there’s just static inside, I think it’s really unlikely you read this far” The reasons for lying low are clear and obvious and stupid. The opportunity is to adopt a new practice, one where you find low-risk, low-cost ways to find out just how smart and intuitive and generous you actually are.” ~ Poke the Box

At the end of Poke the Box Godin asks us to share it, his m.o. since he wrote Unleashing the Ideavirus. I hesitated after reading Tribes but this one is a win for all of us.

View all my reviews

Are you a Linchpin, a Genius, or an Alaka‘i Manager?

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First off, this posting isn’t going to qualify as a book review for Linchpin, Are you Indispensable? because I haven’t finished reading it. I barely got 12 or so Kindle-short pages into it when the business of day-to-day living interfered in a couple of different ways, and these thoughts started to tumble out.

This is one of those talking out loud kind of writing to think postings for me. Ideas are colliding, and coming from different places, and I’m trying to string them together better, ho‘olōkahi.

This is also a post exclusively written for Talking Story, and not cross-posted for our usual Leadership Tuesday on Say “Alaka‘i.” —Published there today:
Dear Workplace: Let’s Get Healthy

As we can easily do on a blog, I have included several TS-the-mothership link connections too, many more than usual, and you can hover your curser over them to see their titles.

Feel free to interrupt at any time, and tell me what you think too: The comment boxes await you and our conversation. Sincerely, I would LOVE to hear from you and learn from you on all of this, my Ho‘ohana Community.

Ho‘ohana kākou, let’s talk story.

From “greatest asset” to “disposable worker”

Here’s my nomination for the most politically correct, yet sadly empty statement made in many companies today:

“Our people are our greatest asset.”

It’s a statement we are still hearing as our 20+ calendar years have reached their first decade mark, yet the phrases we now use to describe those in the workforce include cheaper labor, outsourcing, permanent temps, and worse, “disposable worker.”

The people called our greatest asset snicker, or tragically, they weep. For their work is not viewed that way. What they feel they experience, and are powerless to change, is this unspoken reality: “Our most profitable processes are our biggest assets, and we just keep people around to keep them running.”

Even within most companies calling themselves a “family business” people assume family means “the owners are related” and qualified to lead by blood versus talent or experience. (We have seen this on a few episodes of Undercover Boss; the CBS reality show producers went for family leaders early into their dirt-digging). We don’t first think of family as the value of ‘Ohana, or as the MWA operational model of an ‘Ohana in Business.

From the “American Dream” to a “Global Possibility”

In 2010, struggle remains our common bond. We’re still reeling, feeling we’re  victims of financial illiteracy who are looking for new answers, trying to recover best we can from a “great recession” of global proportions. The “American Dream” is being questioned and redefined.  One encouraging sign, I think a very encouraging one, is that we’re  now wondering exactly how we can describe a more universal “Global Dream.” It’s a dream we can all enroll in, regardless of our sense of place: We can come together kākou (inclusively) as a strengthened force of diverse humanity intent on living better, and prospering well in concert.

Now THAT would be a tremendously remarkable tsunami of human energy!

I’ve thought about this dream quite a bit in recent months as the economic fiasco of our great recession has reached pandemic proportions and crept so close to home, becoming as personal as personal can get. It’s gotten me to think about Aloha once again too, as our rootstock and fertile soil. It’s gotten me to do a better job in defining wealth as the value it truly is, and as connected to Aloha.

This today, is about how managers fit into this entire picture.

How are managers ‘linchpins’ —a leader-labeling Godin seeks to weave into our vocabulary to stay (the man is a genius with language of intention), or are they another player and puzzle piece we best define differently?

Names are important, for they carry kaona (storied meaning) and our mana‘o (where our beliefs and convictions connect to our values) and I prefer all we have invested in being Alaka‘i Managers. (Surprise, surprise… I admit my bias.)

From “sensibility for work” to “Aloha given service”

Since writing Managing with Aloha, and having its “sensibility for worthwhile work” spin into a six year-old business for me, now a larger umbrella for two other entrepreneurial pursuits, I have kept Aloha close —root stock foundational, as the “universal value of unconditional love and acceptance” I had written it to be about. The most oft-repeated quote from MWA is this one, and I still believe it to be true:

“Every single day, somewhere in the world, Aloha comes to life. As it lives and breathes within us, it defines the epitome of sincere, gracious, and intuitively perfect customer service given from one person to another.”

However, I had also written, “This genuine connection is the Aloha Spirit Hawai‘i is known for thriving within.” and that part? Not true. We don’t feel like we’re thriving. Not in Hawai‘i, and not elsewhere.

So how can we get that healthy feeling of thriving prosperity back?

From “gloom and doom” to “your dream of doing work better”

It is easy to list the gloom and doom. In his signature pithy way, Seth Godin wrote in Linchpin:

“The system we grew up with is a mess. It’s falling apart at the seams and a lot of the people I care about are in pain because the things we thought would work don’t. Every day I meet people who have so much to give but have been bullied enough or frightened enough to hold it back. They have become victims, pawns in a senseless system that uses them up and undervalues them.”

He goes on to say, “It’s time to stop complying with the system and draw your own map.” —and I agree. As one very recent example, I really liked the way that John Temple, Editor of Peer News in Honolulu, recently described what this drawing of a new map can be for journalism.

“Don’t abandon your belief in the importance of the work or your dream of doing work better than anything you’ve done until now” Don’t waste the time you have. Do the stories you’ve always wanted to do.”

From “systems and processes” to “genius and artistry”

We’ve talked about this, here and in Managing with Aloha, within the value of ‘Imi ola, and creating your own destiny versus being a victim of happenstance. Godin’s book is an effort asking us all to choose better individually, choosing to be those who create art, and he defines art as “what we’re doing when we do our best work.”

I applaud his effort, I truly do. “What we’re doing when we do our best work” is what Ho‘ohana is all about! However much as I don’t want to believe this, and am hoping people will surprise me, I can’t help feeling Linchpin won’t help enough people, for they’ll think it’s pie in the sky or simply too hard.

Creating art intimidates us, and people will still hold themselves back, thinking, “but it’s not me, I just can’t. I’m not a genius, and I’m not an artist.”

Again, I haven’t finished his book, but I daresay Godin’s blog reaches a much bigger audience, and he added this there, which I think makes it even more daunting:

“My definition of art contains three elements:

  1. Art is made by a human being.
  2. Art is created to have an impact, to change someone else.
  3. Art is a gift. You can sell the souvenir, the canvas, the recording… but the idea itself is free, and the generosity is a critical part of making art.

By my definition, most art has nothing to do with oil paint or marble.

Art is what we’re doing when we do our best work.”

Godin has another description in Linchpin I like even better. He says, “You Are a Genius” and then he goes on to explain that “A genius looks at something that others are stuck on and gets the world unstuck.”

Well, before we get the world unstuck, we all need to get ourselves unstuck. We get the creativity part, I think, with writers and creativity coaches like Mark McGuinness of Lateral Action helping greatly. What is harder for us is the work part.

“It’s not rocket science!
But it is hard work.”
—David Heinemeier Hansson of 37Signals in a Start-up School keynote he called,
A Secret to Making Money Online

The “brilliance and ease” of Genius

In 2005,  Dick Richards published Is Your Genius at Work? 4 Key Questions to Ask Before Your Next Career Move. I have subscribed to his definition since then, finding it so useful for those of us who think of ourselves as ordinary people.

I believe, as Dick does, that we ‘ordinary people’ all have some kind of genius we need to define in a self-awareness of our gifts.

Dick had made a very appealing promise on the very first page of his book’s  Preface, saying that his book was about “what I believe to be the main differences between people who do their work with brilliance and ease and those who do not.” He went on to explain:

“People who do their work with brilliance and ease bring their natural power and energy to their work. I call that natural power and energy genius. They also bring to their work a sense that it contributes somehow to something larger than themselves. I call that sense purpose.

If you want your work and career to resonate with your natural power and your purpose, you need to find a match between what is out there in the world of possibility, and what is with you.

Your genius is at the core of what is with you.”

Dick and I had several conversations about how our Aloha spirit connects to this self-awareness of our genius. Exhilarating stuff.

Dick’s book seeks to provide a service to others, one we all need and most will welcome: understanding who we are, and what we are meant to do with the gift of life we have been given. The question, Is Your Genius at Work? taps into our energy. And hmmm” how have we talked about energy here? As the precious resource leading (and self-leadership) creates, and managing (and self-management) optimizes.

Practically speaking, books —Godin’s, Richards’, mine included, don’t give genius-defining help to most people where and when they need that help every day —in the workplace. Managers do.

From “Linchpin” to “Alaka‘i Manager”

All of these discussions lead to one polarizing thought for me: We need Great Managers more than we have ever needed them before, and we need the Alaka‘i Managers who have a foundational, value-centered belief in our common bonds of Aloha inspiration.

To believe in Aloha, is to truly believe that “people can be our greatest asset” and as a statement which must be lived in a real, and practical way, and not as politically correct words very carelessly said.

To be an Alaka‘i Manager, is to lead and manage as verbs connected to energy, recognizing human-propelled energy as our greatest resource. The Alaka‘i Manager knows full well, that “People are not our greatest asset: People who Hō‘imi with the energy of their Ho‘ohana are.”

To believe in Aloha, is to believe that we cannot have a “lost generation,” we cannot accept the idea of a “disposable worker” —and we won’t: We’ll Ho‘ohana Kākou, in working together for a better way, and a healthier humanity painting a global dream, and bringing it to life.

People can believe these things, but fact is, most people need help making it their personal reality. That is where the Alaka‘i Manager steps in, and begins to matter, being of Aloha service to their fellow human beings.

For instance:
We looked at what this “help” looks like in last week’s postings in connection to strengths management:

  1. Feeling Good Isn’t the Same as Feeling Strong
  2. Failure isn’t cool. Neither is weakness

We’ve always known “Genius” is remarkable

I don’t know what the answers are for everyone in the world, and I truly applaud Seth Godin for taking on such an ambitious book, urging us all to be artists and geniuses as he does —I’m going to finish reading Linchpin.

However I do know this: Alaka‘i Managers need to be the new geniuses of our workplaces, those who look at something that others are stuck on and who then get the world unstuck. They need to consider the “brilliance and ease” of work to be their deliverable, and their service given to the world, their purpose as Dick Richards defines it. And their own bosses need to support them in doing so.

Not only do they  need to be, Alaka‘i Managers  can be workplace geniuses, and relatively quickly —much more quickly than we’ll see a new upswing in artists, and even though Seth Godin’s weeks old Linchpin is on bestseller lists and enjoying phenomenal, hopeful reviews. Why? It’s not what people read; it’s what they believe they can do.

Alaka‘i Managers help people in the workplace believe. Alaka‘i Managers make genius possibility more exponential: Their art is in strengthening and growing other people.

Alaka‘i Managers are the ones who will mentor, coach and support the Linchpins who have genius calibre art inside them, for that genius calibre art they have? It’s what we know as the inspiration that flowers when you are in-spirit ke Aloha.

Seth Godin and I do agree on this:
You have to make the choice to be a Linchpin, reveal and use your genius, or be an Alaka‘i Manager. Wildly exciting, is the possibility that all three can happen, and I believe they do. To “ordinary people.” Now to make that possibility a better probability.

Managers, kÄ“ia lā: Move. Into your Sweet Spot. You can  Heal Thyself.

Photo Credits: Book Jackets from Amazon.com
The Final Touch by Dani Sardà i Lizaran on Flickr
Genius Bar by Thomas Hawk on Flickr

*Footnote: About my affiliate links
Any income made from our aStore on Amazon.com is used to fund our literacy campaign within Ho‘ohana Publishing, a Teaching with Aloha initiative. We purchase books which supplement Managing with Aloha as needed, and donate them to schools and workplace training programs committed to teaching within Aloha value-alignment.

A Book Review of Seth Godin’s Tribes: Good Message, Rotten Context

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2010 Update: I made the decision to bring Say “Alaka‘i” here to Talking Story in late May of 2010 when the Honolulu Advertiser, where the blog previously appeared, was merged with the Star Bulletin (Read more at Say “Alaka‘i” is Returning to the Mothership).

Therefore, the post appearing below is a copy of the one which had originally appeared there on January 22, 2009, so we will be able to reference it in the future when the original url it had been published on is no more…

Hibiscus

A Book Review of Seth Godin’s Tribes: Good Message, Rotten Context

I owe you a follow-up. From The Top 7 Business Themes on my 2009 Wish List:

5. The Role of the Manager reconstructed

Managers matter, yet we still don’t quite understand why they matter and how. Managers still work and operate in that vast wasteland called “middle management” where they are babysitting the mediocrity tolerated in our organizations instead of being stewards of the smart, professional, and mission-based disciplines which make them healthier. I am afraid that until the role of the manager changes, nothing else will.

A future preview:
Marketing Guru Seth Godin is enjoying some success right now with his latest book, Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us, and I will review it in a future blog post. In short, he seeks to elevate leadership —and I applaud his ideas in that regard, however he does so at the expense of management, and he depreciates the worth of managers nearly every single time he mentions them. I understand the comparison he is trying to make, however please don’t buy in to that notion that we don’t need managers —he is dead wrong.

As promised, this is my book review for Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us.

Tribes
I’m normally quite an enthusiastic fan of marketing author Seth Godin, with several of his books in my library. I read his blog regularly, and thus had sweet anticipation built up for Tribes once he announced the book was to be released, for I had caught his early blog posts hinting to the thoughts he’d had simmering, discussing them with the readers of my coaching site.

However this time, Godin has written a book which annoyed me with its careless construction (what little there is), and disturbs me for a reason which cuts deeply for someone who thinks of herself as the managers’ advocate; Godin didn’t have to knock management in order to elevate leadership. A pity really, for the book could have stood on its own without him doing so —and with more editing and thoughtful construction. Tribes is a book which seemed to have been rushed to publication for some reason, with something I found to be very out of character for the writing I have come to expect from Seth Godin —several contradictions and an incomplete thesis. Unfortunately, the book comes off as an added revenue stream in his publishing empire versus a book with an important message.

Godin is a master at something I frequently will advocate with you: He chooses his vocabulary carefully, to create a ‘language of intention’ which gets talked about and communicated easily. His fans can tell you all about his “zooming,” who a “sneezer” is, why “purple cows” are remarkable, and about the ingredients in a “meatball sundae.” Brilliance. In that regard he doesn’t disappoint in Tribes, for it is rife with several gems, mostly winners he’s pulled out of past blog posts proven to resonate. However this time they are lined up with a jab here, and a joust there, and Godin seems to sputter pronouncements one after the other with very little effort at substantiating them. He seeks to be concise and pithy, (and he usually is), but in a convoluted Tribes I found him to be impatient and incomplete.

Then the punch to the gut: Godin has selected a word I revere, leadership, and has sought to define it as the better comparison to an anti-management message that is riddled with rude assumptions in the generalities he uses. For example;

“Management is about manipulating resources to get a known job done.
Managers manage a process they’ve seen before, and they react to the outside world, striving to make that process as fast and as cheap as possible.

Leadership, on the other hand is about creating change that you believe in.

Movements have leaders, and movements make things happen.

Leaders have followers; managers have employees.

Managers make widgets, leaders make change.”

Clearly, Godin doesn’t really understand what great managers really do.

Godin defines a tribe as “People connected to one another, connected to a leader, and connected to an idea.” He says that tribes need two things; shared interest, and way to communicate. Oh, and a critical third need is this one: You “can’t have a tribe without a leader, and you can’t be a leader without a tribe.”

His core message is this one, a call to brave leadership: “Everyone is not just a marketer, everyone is a leader: Anyone who wants to make a difference can” The question isn’t ‘Is it possible?’ but ‘Will I choose to [lead]?’ ”The market needs you, we need you, and the tools are there just waiting. All that’s missing is you, and your vision, and your passion.”

This is a good message, and Godin’s book, his apparent call to arms within leadership, seeks to talk to us about two things: Not wasting the tools newly available to us every day, and being the leader possible movements need to make them happen. He’s quick to use internet examples, but the internet is just one tool, and he explains why “You don’t need a keyboard to lead, you just need the desire to make something happen. If you want to lead, and have the right cause, you can.”

I agree with much of what Godin says about leadership. For example, “Leadership is an act of generosity: You are providing fuel for a movement.” He devotes some time to explaining his belief that “People want connection, growth, something new: They want change” Being part of a tribe is one of our survival mechanisms” We can’t resist the rush of belonging, and the thrill of the new.” Sounds pretty good, right? However with each page turned, I found myself voicing one “yeah, but” after another, seeing the opportunity for management and leadership partnerships versus one being lifted at the expense of the other.

I honestly could continue with more snippets which share the potential of Tribes, but as I’ve already done in these few paragraphs, to do so requires a repackaging that would take considerable more work, work I feel Godin should have done for the price of his book. So I think I will leave it at this:

If you are a Seth Godin fan I expect that you will like Tribes. He loves to tell stories, and he shares quite a few entertaining ones. I agree with Godin on the opportunity which exists for more leadership in our world, and I think that a reader eager to lead can come away with quite a few triggers which will steer them in the right direction. I simply ask you to skip over the anti-management message, for it is quite irrelevant to the rest of the book, and it simply isn’t as true as Godin would have you believe. Managers matter.

The Customer is NOT always right

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Preface: I have newly updated this posting after reading a September 2009 posting from Seth Godin called, Win the fight, lose the customer. He writes,

smart marketers understand that the word ‘right’ in “The customer is always right” doesn’t mean that they’d win in court or a debate. It means, “If you want the customer to remain a customer, you need to permit him to believe he’s right.” If someone thinks they’re unhappy, then you know what? They are.

When I was a resort operations exec, that statement,  “the customer is not always right,” was one my employees loved hearing from me. They would say,

“Come on Rosa, say it, just say it. Just stop at the ‘however’ part.”

When you are in the customer service business you will inevitably come across the person who seems to simply be a jerk. For some reason, they may even be relishing being a jerk at that point in time, and there is no satisfying him or her.

So I would say it, giving my staff the brief satisfaction they craved, and the affirmation that it wasn’t them, it was the customer. The customer was having a day in which they woke up on the wrong side of the bed. It was the customer who needed to go back to sleep, get some air or something, so they could start the day over, and start it over happy finding that we were still there, and happy to share the good times with them too.

Yet brief satisfaction given, my employees knew that after a pregnant pause in which we all smiled at each other feeling we were in cahoots, I was not going to “stop at the ‘however’ part.” This was the full speech, and we all knew it by heart, or close enough for the point to be clear:

The customer is NOT always right ” however, how the customer may be feeling right now is their reality, and we have to take the high road, being the good people we are, and figure out what in the world happened causing them to feel as they do. We have to recognize that they feel right, and we have to respect their feelings. If we had any part in their cause and effect sequence WHATSOEVER, we are the ones who need to make it all right. In fact, even if we didn’t, we still have to make it right, because this is about who WE are. And we are good people.

I thought about this today after re-reading a talk story we’ve been having at Rick’s place about motivation, values, and relativity.

I often talk about how values determine our behavior: In a nutshell, that is the entire premise of Managing with Aloha. I write of the nineteen different universal values I believe will help you create a better business, when they are inculcated into a company’s culture pervasively enough to shape everyone’s behavior for the better.
New update: See Choose Values at www.ManagingwithAloha.com

Values do something else. They frame things for us. They provide us with a kind of looking glass, a lens through which we see the rest of the world from our own viewpoint. They cause you to see things very subjectively, colored by your opinions and beliefs. Ignoring your values is not an easy thing to do.

So regardless of what they are, the clearer and stronger your values are, and the more definite, assertive, and passionate you are about articulating them, the more you must practice Ha‘aha‘a [Hawaiian value of humility] and Ho‘ohanohano [Hawaiian value of dignity]. These are the values of humility, modesty, open-mindedness, dignity, and respect we all share.

Of Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits (they are listed here), most of us have the biggest problem with Habit 5: Seek first to understand, then to be understood. It sounds like empathy, and that it is, however Covey calls this the habit of communication for good reason. The stronger our own values, the more open-minded we must be if we are to expect others to willingly engage with us, feeling safe, respected, and welcomed when they attempt to do so.

In the aftermath of the London explosions, many of us are asking ourselves questions about good versus bad values. Our disagreements about them will never be resolved if we can’t talk to each other about them, and if we stop trying.

Once a problem exists, objectivity, subjectivity and relativity all get to be a moot point. What we need are open minds, and the willingness to create a better alternative than those that may presently exist.

And guess what? These are the lessons learned of values-centered businesses.This is why I get excited about business, and why I call people in business the best movers and shakers I know.

Someone has to take the high road, and seize the responsibility for leadership.

Someone has to create a forum where calmer voices prevail.

This is not about them. This is about us and about who WE are. And we are good people

Maybe, just maybe, thinking of our adversaries as our customers could help.

Related Posts:

Written the 4th of July, 2005 Red White and Blue Values.
Written in November 2004 Let’s define values.